Beverage dispensers are used to dispense beverages to customers at various locations, such as restaurants, cafeterias, theatres, and other entertainment and/or food service venues. Traditional beverage dispensers provide a limited number of beverage types the can be dispensed (e.g., between six and ten) and offer no advanced features. Newer beverage dispensers can provide a substantially larger number of beverage types and combinations due in large part to the fact that these dispensers are no longer mechanically confined to providing one or two beverage types per dispensing head. For example, newer beverage dispensers can use a single dispensing head to provide up to 1000 different beverage types and combinations.
A combination refers to a mixture of offered beverage types that can be automatically mixed and dispensed from a single dispensing head and represents one advanced feature offered by newer beverage dispensers. A dispensed combination can be, for example, a personal combination of offered beverage types selected by a customer at the beverage dispenser or one of a number of predefined combinations available to a customer to choose from at the beverage dispenser.
With increased sophistication in terms of the number of beverage choices available and other innovative features, it can be desirable for venue owners and/or operators to connect advanced beverage dispensers to an administrator system over a computer network to allow the advanced beverage dispensers to provide telemetry data to the administrator system. Telemetry data can include, for example, data collected at the advanced beverage dispensers related to consumption (e.g., amount of each beverage type and combination consumed at the advanced beverage dispensers) and status (e.g., current amount of ingredients and/or supplies at the advanced beverage dispensers). The administrator system can use the telemetry data to improve, for example, the operation, maintenance, and/or overall logistics associated with running the advanced beverage dispensers.
In addition, it can be further desirable to connect other types of dispenser machines, such as those that dispense canned/bottled beverages, snacks, and/or other items, to an administrator system over a computer network for the same reasons. These dispenser machines are often referred to as vending machines.
The present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.